Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I was recently presented with a petition from residents of my electorate and asked to present it to the House. The petition reads:

This petition of concerned people of the electorate of Makin draws to the attention of the House the severe and urgent threat that climate change poses to the health, wellbeing and security of all people around the world, particularly our poorest and most vulnerable neighbours. We remind the House that Australia's greenhouse emissions are the highest per person amongst wealthy nations, while our emissions reduction targets are among the weakest.

We therefore ask the House to do all in its power to protect communities in Australia and our region from the harmful impacts of climate change, such as more severe heat, extreme and unpredictable weather and rising seas, by committing to deeper and more urgent reductions of our greenhouse emissions; developing a plan to ensure Australia achieves zero net greenhouse emissions well before 2050; supporting families and communities affected by the transition towards renewable energy and more sustainable land use; and lastly by providing additional assistance to help our poorest neighbours adapt to the harmful impacts of climate change.

Climate change discourse throughout the country is to some extent waning from the time I was first elected here in 2007, when, perhaps because we were at the end of a 10-year cycle of drought, the impacts of climate change were more confronting than they are right now. But, nevertheless, it is a matter that continues to be important across the world, and certainly in parts of the world where they are feeling and experiencing similar effects to what we were some 10 years ago. We are seeing predictions of 10 years ago with respect to melting ice and extreme weather events occurring almost on a daily basis around the world, and more particularly recently we saw it in the USA and in neighbouring countries of the USA with hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones, flooding, fire and the like. Those kinds of events caused not only the loss of lives but also destruction, and cost society trillions of dollars.

A recent report from the Commission on Pollution and Health found that in 2015 around nine million deaths worldwide were linked to pollution, with some 6.5 million linked to air pollution and 1.8 million to water pollution, accounting for 16 per cent of all deaths in 2015. So, apart from the destruction, there is also the loss of lives as a result of the pollution. Recent energy policy from this government abandons the renewable energy direction that Australia had embraced and takes us back to our reliance on fossil fuels. That not only continues to contribute to climate change but adds to poor health outcomes. We need to maintain our focus on climate change because it does pose threats to the people who live on this planet and the planet itself. For those reasons I present this petition.

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